Was there a design flaw or would any building of that height have failed?
In: Engineering
Gently set a rock on your phone. No damage.
Drop a rock on your phone from a second-story window. _Smash._
Now consider a situation where, three quarters of the way up a building, several floors holding the rest of it up suddenly cease to exist. _Smash._
In the real incident, the collapse didn’t happen immediately after the crash. The crash didn’t cause the stricken floors to _completely_ stop holding up the rest of the building. But as fires burned, the heat weakened the remaining supports. At some critical point, the supports became so weak that they suddenly gave way. _Then_ the buildings collapsed.
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